Mineko Iwasaki Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Mineko Iwasaki is a published Japanese author, businesswoman, and former geisha.

Born in Kyoto, Japan on November 2, 1949, Mineko Iwasaki was born by the name Masako Tanaka. She was the most famous geisha in Japan, and retired suddenly at just the young age of 29 years old.

During her geisha life, Mineko was known for the performances that she conducted for royalty and celebrity figures during her life as a geisha. When she was just a young apprentice, she was the heir apparent (atotori) to her geisha house (okiya).

Mineko was interviewed by the American author Arthur Golden for details on her background and for more information while he was writing his book, Memoirs of a Geisha. She would later regret consenting to the interview with the author, citing a breach of confidentiality, and then would later sue and settle out of court with him over the parallels between what was in his book and her life.

She would go on to release an autobiography of her own about her life. The book was released under the title Geisha of Gion in the United Kingdom and carried the title Geisha: A Life for the United States market.

Geisha: A Life is the autobiography penned by Mineko Iwasaki. If you have read Memoirs of a Geisha and loved it, then be sure to check out the real life story of this former geisha by the woman who lived it.

Mineko felt that it was time for her to speak out, even though no woman in the history of the karyukai spanning three hundred years has ever come forth in public in order to tell her story. She recounts that unwritten rules have constrained them and instructed them not to do so, to not reveal the sanctity of their exclusive calling. However, she puts together the story of her life and brings them to readers as she sees appropriate in a memoir that is sure to have you turning the pages until you get to the end.

Mineko would eventually rise to fame and notoriety as the most successful geisha of her generation. The author was just five years of age when she departed her parents’ home to pursue to the life of a geisha and inhabit that unique and up until now very secretive world.

Over the course of the next quarter of a century, Mineko would go on to live a life that was filled with professional demands as well as rich rewards. She would go on to study and learn the formal customs, the language of the geisha, and to study with precision the arts of Japanese dance and music.

She would go on to enchant figures in the audience with her skills and practice of this art form, from captains of industry to leaders of the entertainment world to princes and kings. Some of these would end up becoming close friends.

Through her pride and her determination, Mineko would go on to be hailed as one of the most prized geishas that Japan has ever had, and in the end, one of the last amazing practitioners of this art form which has gone on to fade some from its heyday.

In this book, the author recounts her own personal story and guides readers through the years of her life. She illustrates warm years of her early childhood and moves on to the intense but privileged upbringing that she had in the household, moving on to her years as a famous geisha, and lands at her decision to retire at 29 years old and get married, her own exit strangely mirroring the decline of geisha culture as well. It was a life that she had discovered was too constricting to continue and ultimately decided that she had to leave.

Mineko shows the reader the beautiful nature and the wonder of Gion Kobu, a special place that existed in a world apart whose very identity was dependent on preserving the traditions of the past that had been time-honored. She also shows how this world also existed within the world of Japan post-World War II at the same time when Japan was going through a transformation from being a post-feudal society to a modern one.

The author says that when it comes to what it means to be a geisha, there is frequently mystery and misunderstanding. She hopes her story will show what it is like and also be like a record of this unique time in Japan’s cultural history.

This memoir is one of a kind and details how for over four decades, Mineko resided within this powerful and often invisible world. It goes into the very fabric of how a geisha is developed and is a story both of heroism and beauty, and reveals a culture and a time that is rarely shared with the Western world. Moving form a little princess to a bright star in the geisha world, the reader will be fascinated by the revelations of this book. It is truly one book you cannot afford to miss out on! Get a copy of Geisha: A Life by Mineko Iwasaki to absorb each fascinating detail of a true life story for yourself.